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Those objects are collectable, timeless and perfect for what they do. It's not like buying a laptop, which is useless a decade or two later. In my opinion, the

• niftich 10y ago
  > collectible, timeless (...) and markedly more backwards- and forwards-compatible than anything digital. We can read plays from the 1600s, or essays on how to build a government from the 1780s. We can admire art from thousands of years ago, and people thousands of years in the future will be able to hold developed photographs of us in their hands and readily perceive it, while JPEG/EXIF file format will, without conscious intervention, will sink into near-complete obscurity. When we die, how do we pass on our digital possessions? Do Facebook's, Instagram's datacenters, full of pictures of now-dead twenty- and thirty-somethings, will have to purge inactive accounts one day. Will our kids inherit our iTunes library even though they have their own? Do we pass 1000-game heirloom Steam accounts to our grandkids? Morbid, I know, but the tangibility of physical, 'real-world' objects exudes a more reliable aura of permanence than that of digital content. Even if our descendants hold a garage sale the very next day, at least the world is made aware of our stuff, and it doesn't just spin away on a hard drive somewhere, forgotten.